


Magical Things, Patiently Waiting

by WhisperElmwood



Series: The Hastily Revised Bestiary of Stiles Stilinski (Mage) [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Magic Stiles, Original Character Death(s), Supernatural Creatures, Swearing, Witch Lydia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-17 18:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/870873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhisperElmwood/pseuds/WhisperElmwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything starts on the night of a new moon in their final year of high school - a night of new beginnings, fresh starts and powerful magics. Stiles Stilinski and the Hale pack come up against a creature not seen in centuries, believed to be extinct. This is the beginning of a long and arduous road for Stiles, one that he’s not even sure he wants to go down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magical Things, Patiently Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to my BETA's Dirtydirtychai and Polytropic-Liar, they did a fantastic job for me, so any mistakes left are totally my own fault. This monster has been in the works for more than two months now, and none of it would have been possible without Chai there to kick my ass every time I stalled and/or whinged.
> 
> This is the first installment of a long, long, really long, hugely long, Stiles-centric series. Buckle up for the long haul, basically. Part 2 will be up soon, the BETA's nearly finished!
> 
> This installment is gen or pre-slash-if-you-squint-hard. Eventually, down the road, it'll end up Derek/Stiles, and there are a couple other relationships hinted at, too. 
> 
> I sincerely apologize for the Latin and the Old English, I don't speak either, so I had to use online translators. Sorry.
> 
> Warnings in the end notes.

 

**Magic Things, Patiently Waiting**

 

Everything starts, quietly, on the night of a new moon in mid-fall - a night of new beginnings, fresh starts and powerful magics. There is no one there to witness it, other than the local fauna, despite the clear skies and warm night air. People stay away from the Hale house.

The house has remained empty through the few short years since Derek’s return. It stands alone: hidden in the trees, the ruins ravaged by time and seasons, memories and secrets and ghosts cradled within its crumbling walls.

The last remaining alpha of the original Hale Pack has balked at every suggestion of rebuilding his old home, every suggestion of knocking it down and starting from scratch. The land speaks to him of happier, simpler times that are now locked deep, protected. He can’t disturb those memories, however much anyone tries to convince him it would help him to move on, that the land should be used, not left to go barren through neglect.

Instead, the house has become a sanctuary, silently guarding and protecting the pack within its desolate embrace whenever they have need of it. Has become gathering site, training area, the place to run toward when the pack has been scattered. The continued presence of the _new_ pack has strengthened something: in the land, in the territory, even within the remnants of the building itself.

And now, in the quiet of the night, it has drawn _others_ to its protection.

A gentle rustling sounds, a sussuration that has the wildlife chattering restlessly. Rodents, insects, lizards... all the smallest creatures scatter, in an attempt to keep their distance lest they be eaten, as hundreds, _thousands_ , of tiny bodies move through the grass and leaf litter of the overgrown clearing. They are heading for the house, killing and eating any stragglers unfortunate enough to still be in their path.

It takes only a few short minutes, and then the rustling and movement is gone, leaving everything still once more. The Hale house is silent again, but no longer quite as empty, or alone, as it had been.

\---

“Pretty sure it’s this way.”

Three hikers crowd around a much folded map, taking in the route, the markings and scribblings made before they left their homes. They are lost, and unwilling to accept it. Each hiker is experienced, has been hiking and exploring for many years, and they have even, on many occasions, hiked this very area. But, for this moment at least, they are lost.

“This map... is a piece of shit,” the lone woman declares, her tone making the statement one of extreme disgust as she picks at a frayed edge of the laminated card. It’s the same map they have used every time they have walked these parts.

“Oh, it’s not that bad. I think we just took a wrong turn a little ways back,” the taller, broader of the two men says, as he pokes one finger at an arbitrary point on the map, careful to at least avoid smudging the notations.

The first speaker, a short, fastidious looking man, sighs and pulls the map away from poking fingers, folds it up and tucks it away again. “So lets back track and try again.”

Three hours pass.

The map goes missing, not even a torn corner left in its designated pocket. Their compasses begin to malfunction and then they simply can’t find them. Their water bottles spring sudden leaks, ruining more than just tempers, and the chicken salad they’d prepared for lunch is discovered to have gone sour in their bags, leaving them with granola bars that taste more and more like sawdust with each successive bite. Every place they stop to gather their bearings looks both familiar and not at all, the once innocuous-seeming landscape suddenly oppressive in its monotony.

They’d broken camp in cheerful early morning light, the familiar sounds of wildlife spurring them onward. Now, the birds are silent and the light filtering through the sparse canopy overhead is a cold, ubiquitous, disorienting gray. Every direction they try they’re faced with a disquieting sameness. Every tangled root, every laden branch, every stump, sapling and vine in the underbrush looks exactly the same as every other they have passed, and as the light fails, the shadows grow, forming grotesque shapes at the edges of their vision.

At the fourth hour, as the sun is dropping below the horizon and their ragged single-person line steps into another familiar-yet-not clearing, surrounded by deepening shadows and treacherous roots over jagged stone, the shorter man suddenly exhales an enormous, frustrated breath and  turns on his companions.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Ronelle, would you just quit laughing at me? None of this-” he gestures wildly, taking in the three of them, the shadows, the drying water stains on each of their backpacks, “-is my fault!” His chest heaves with angry breaths as he stares her down.

Ronelle, startled out of whatever thoughts had kept her moving, pulls up short and glares back at him, “Well it sure as hell wasn’t _me_ who lost the fucking map.” She jabs a finger in his direction as she speaks. “And who’s laughing at you, _I_ ain’t laughin at you.” She gestures emphatically with one hand, the other clutching tightly at a shoulder-strap. “The hell is there to laugh _about_? We’re hours behind schedule, and I am tired and hungry and fucking dehydrated-”

The shorter man snorts, obnoxiously, raises his eyebrows as he interrupts her, “Well whose fault is that! I told you we should have brought the cooler-”

The remaining hiker finally loses his own temper, angrily cutting them both off. “Stop it! None of this _matters_ because it’s done now,” he turns a glare of his own on the other man, “and for the record, Ronelle wasn’t laughing at you Ethan, I was right here. We are _all_ dehydrated and tired and maybe we should just take a few minutes to-”

Ethan throws his hands in the air, exasperation and anger getting the best of him, “Oh don’t _even_ play at peacemaking right now Deon, like _you_ didn’t lose the compasses!”

Deon doesn’t react well to this accusation, he lets out a wordless yell of frustration as he stares incredulously at his friends. “How many _more_ times do I have to tell you, I have _no idea_ what you did with your compass, and Ronelle lost hers all by herself!”

Ethan snorts again, turning away from them both with angry movements, all but stomping his feet as Ronelle glares at Deon all the harder. “The _hell_ I did, you know I keep it clipped to my bag, and you’re the only one who touched it except me, what, did it just unclip itself? Grow little legs and run away?” She makes sarcastic little walking movements with her fingers, before abruptly changing tracks, “And _while_ we’re clearin’ the air. Y’all both need to stop starin’ at my ass, because I am too damned fed up with the both of you and it ain’t cute any more.”

Before Deon can respond, Ethan unleashes another frustrated cry and spins, rounding on Ronelle again, “I said stop fucking laughing at-!” He cuts himself off in shock when he realizes no one is laughing, even though he can still hear it. They all stare at each other in silence, Ronelle’s lips pressed into a tight line as she regards him.

And then they can _all_ hear it. Laughter rises out through the woods around them. The three friends are spurred into a flurry of movement, huddling together near the center of the clearing, fingers clutching at clothing in a wordless cry for safety, security. They stand close, shivering, eyeing the treeline all around them, as the lilting, tinny laughter moves from place to place just beyond their ability to see. It sounds like there’s more than one person out there, laughing at them, the voices filled with amusement, and alarmingly, excitement.

It finally fades after long minutes, the last echoes rolling around them for far longer than they ought, and the three hikers move apart slightly, looking around, clearing their throats, checking their backpacks and their clothing. False starts and shaky movements belie their attempts at appearing calm.

After an interminable amount of time, in which they stare around at the trees uncertainly, eyes wide, the hair on their arms, the back of their necks, still risen in the after effects of fear, Ethan hoists his backpack more comfortably, “Let’s just – let’s keep going. Bound to find – we weren’t that far from civilization in the first place, right?” His voice is shaking; Ronelle and Deon nod hasty agreement and, walking far closer together than before, they leave the clearing.

It takes them three days to find their way back to base. Three days of wandering in circles, traipsing through canyons filled deep with leaf litter and soggy earth, hiding under overhangs, tarps secured tight against the driving wind during unforeseen rainstorms. Three days of the continuing inexplicable losses of their equipment, food and even their clothing. Three days of the high, lilting laughter, following their every move, haunting them even as they try to sleep in fits and starts.

When they finally arrive at the Rangers office where they had started, bedraggled, weary, hungry and visibly hysterical, they are transported directly to the closest hospital. When asked by the authorities what had happened, they swear blind that some _one_ , or some _thing_ , had been tracking them, messing with them, staying far enough away it couldn’t be seen during daylight hours - but at night, it came close enough that they could hear it, or them, laughing, the sound unearthly, frightening despite, or perhaps because of, it’s lack of physicality.

Rangers patrol the area with renewed interest and vigour for a while, looking for signs of trouble-makers, but nothing comes of it. All traces of whomever had plagued the three hikers is long gone. If, indeed, any had ever existed at all.

\---

There is something... off, about the old Hale house. Stiles feels it like a phantom itch, a wordless, senseless feeling that he worries at like a loose tooth, poking and prodding at it at the back of his mind.

The air is warm, the light almost golden as the day fades from mid to late afternoon. Stiles likes days like this, days that remember the summer just passed, likes the play of the light in the leaves that are beginning to turn.

The pack are getting ready for a training exercise Stiles has put together for them, waiting for Lydia and Danny to arrive so things can get started. As they wait, Stiles sits on the leaf-strewn, tumble-down porch with a large, heavy spell book on his lap, tapping out an arrhythmic cadence on the solid cover with nervous, jittery fingers.

He knows where each of the pack members are, is consciously aware of their movements and low voices as they prepare themselves, so when there is unexpected movement somewhere to his left in the trees, his focus darts to it. There’s nothing. Just pale shadows and warm fall light dappling the ground in spots of brilliant golden-green. He narrows his gaze for a moment, searching, then puffs a slightly frustrated sigh and looks back to the betas as they begin to rough-house on the overgrown lawn.

He’s been planning this training exercise for weeks, meticulously going over and over the scenarios and the maps, even going so far as to learn some new spells to accomplish them. The idea came to him when Gotilda, a young witch who lives in the area, breezed into town and managed, in a panic, to put the whammy on almost all the wolves with one simple spell. A simple spell that she had since taught him, mostly as an apology for using it in the first place.

As he watches, Scott and Isaac manage, somehow, to get the drop on Boyd. Stiles huffs out a laugh as the three of them fall into a pile of limbs and claws, rolling around with laughter and yelps and the occasional battle cry. After the boys have made enough noise to send the nearby birds flying, scolding them as they go, Erica joins in with a raucous yell and then things really get violent. Stiles leans back on his elbows, content simply to watch as his pack mates make even more of a mess of the lawn, grass, leaves, twigs and even damp earth sent flying.

Allison drops down carelessly beside him, all long limbs and a hunter’s grace, something he still envies on his, thankfully now infrequent, self-doubting days. She flips her cascade of dark hair over her right shoulder, out of her way and smiles down at him as he treats her to one of his shit-eating grins, “Hey, scary lady.”

Allison’s smile grows, as he knew it would at the nickname, her cheeks dimpling, eyes sparkling with good humour. It took Alison a long while to regain the trust that everyone had lost in her over her actions during the whole Argent family mess, but he’s glad to have her with them now.

“You going to let us in on what you have planned?” she wheedles with a sweet smile that seems a little at odds with her tone.

Stiles shrugs, turns his gaze back to the wolf-pile rolling around the lawn, “Nope! Not ‘til everyone’s here, this is a whole-pack thing. Danny and Lydia might not be wolves, but they still need to be here for this.”

Which is true. Jackson’s sudden removal from Beacon Hills after the kanima thing had hit Danny and Lydia hard, as a result Lydia had decided to inform him of everything happening in the town. After a lot of thought and some vetting from Derek and the other wolves, Danny had joined them. He’d been offered the bite, Derek having reasoned that he would be a good addition to the pack, but Stiles was in no way surprised to learn that Danny decided to wait, to think about it and finish school first at the very least.

Alison pulls her hand up from the surface of the wood where she’s been picking at the splinters and frowns at her palm. “Have you been having parties up here with your friends from Jungle?”

“What? No. Why?” Stiles leans over to look. There’s a tacky little plastic sequin stuck to the ball of her palm. He looks at the porch and sees a smattering of sequins and beads, dotted about under the leaf litter. Bright ruby-red, they actually sparkle a little, and now that he knows what he’s looking for, he can see them clearly.

“Weird. Probably stoners dicking around up here.”

Alison flicks the sequin off her palm. “Well. They lack taste, if they’re up here wearing red sequins.”

Stiles sniffs, affecting an offended expression, “I will have you know that some of my friends wear red sequins very well.” Alison just smirks at him.

Stiles doesn’t jump when Derek makes his appearance, but only because he can feel all the wolves on the fringes on his senses these days, if he concentrates. And he is concentrating.

“They’re here,” Derek says simply, as he pads past them down the weather beaten steps of the porch and out onto the lawn. The betas all perk up as Derek approaches, rolling away from one another, still laughing and all sporting a good few rapidly healing scrapes and scratches. Erica gives Isaac one last thump and rolls to her feet as he snaps playfully at her, wolfy teeth bared.

Stiles scrabbles awkwardly to his feet, hefting the book into his arms as he does, and follows after Derek, with Allison a couple steps behind him. He can just make out Lydia’s magical signature right at the edge of his senses, and the knowledge that everything will be starting in only a few minutes has his pulse jumping nervously. Derek and Allison join the others heading in the direction of the road, and he heads for the tree line instead.

He drops into his chosen spot and designated go-point a few feet from the edge of the clearing just as Danny’s car rounds the bend and bounces up to the house. He flicks through the book, leafing past many scribbled notes and makeshift bookmarks, some with even more scribbled notes on them, until he finds the correct pages.

They don’t look like they’re going to get their asses over to him quickly enough, so he calls out, “Hey, wolf bros! Stop smelling each other’s butts and lets get this show on the road already.”

He swears he can feel the force of multiple eyes rolling and just smirks in response. Derek’s the first to actually open his mouth when everyone’s within human hearing range, though.

“Still with the dog jokes, Stiles? Really?” He has his eyebrows raised in his patented ‘I’m pretending you’re not as funny as you think you are’ expression. He gets that one a lot. “What next? Rover and Fido references?”

Stiles grins again, before dismissing the comment. “Hush, Bad Moon, I have important things to impart. Sit!”

As Derek exaggeratedly rolls his eyes, mouthing ‘Bad Moon?’ at Scott who just shrugs, Stiles gestures emphatically at the ground in front of him, pulling a ring box out of his pocket with a flourish. Everyone drops to the ground and gets comfortable, Lydia joining Danny and Alison near the rear of the group with a reluctance that has to be about the dirt.

Or not just dirt. Danny makes a disgusted noise and shifts back to his feet hastily. Everyone looks at him with varying expressions, so he points at the grass: “Frog bones. I think. Maybe rats, too.” Lydia wrinkles her nose in apparent distaste, though her expression actually radiates interest as she and Alison both move aside to make some skeleton free room for him. “If they were a little less dead, I could use those,” she says.

At that pronouncement, Alison chuckles. “The glamorous life of a witch?”

Lydia gives her a grin. “Absolutely.”

While everyone talks over the spell work that involves small animal parts, something Stiles himself could give a lesson on these days, Derek crouches to one side, somewhat between Stiles and the rest of the pack. Stiles can feel the alpha watching him, and tries not to let it bother him. They already talked about this, so Derek knows the general gist of the plan--nothing specific, and certainly not any more than the rest of the wolves will now be told. Stiles is making him take part too, after all.

He turns his attention back to the rest of the pack and coughs, interrupting them. He waits a moment for them to calm down.

“So! This is a ring box.” He ignores the smattering of ‘no shits’ that declaration gets, and ploughs on, “There’re a crap-ton of these out there in the woods.” He flicks the lid open with one thumb, and speaks over Isaac as he tries to interject, “Questions later, Larry.” Isaac subsides with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. “Each of you has five of these to collect. They’re all identical, except for one thing.”

He turns the box to show the contents. He’d thought probably too long and too hard over this part, but finally settled on coloured glass drops, the things Lydia’s parents use to fill their vases with in their fashionably over-decorated mansion of a house. He’d found a random multi-coloured collection in a dollar store, selected some colours and then set to work.

“There’s five stashes of these out there. Different colour for each stash. Each stash is otherwise identical. You guys gotta find’em and take one, and only one, from each. Now, quick warning, I will be casting a little spell.”

Everyone starts talking loudly, reacting to that news exactly as he expects them to. It sounds like Lydia and Danny are defending him, though, which is nice, considering even Scott’s looking a little mutinous over the magic thing. Stiles drops his chin into one hand, lets them argue it out. None of them are happy, none of them like having spells thrown at them. They all remember Gotilda last month, and the Flamingo Coven two months before that.

After a couple minutes, Derek stands up. “Enough.”

Everyone shuts up. Derek scowls, folding his arms over his chest, stretching his Henley alarmingly. “We’re _all_ taking part in this. Stiles and I have already talked about it, it’s settled. Pay attention.”

“Uh. Thanks?” Stiles takes a quick moment to recollect himself, avoids Derek’s _everything_ and picks up where he left off. “Right. You remember Gotilda’s spell?” There’s a round of nods and grimaces, “That’s what I’m using. You’ll be hunting without your nose or your ears. That spell took all but one of you completely out of the game! So, training.”

“But - how are we gonna hunt?” Scott gives him a ridiculously petulant expression, mouth turned down in a moue of frustration.

“Scott ol’ buddy ol’ pal, _that_ is precisely the reason for this training exercise in the first place. You all rely way too much on your noses and ears. Seriously. _All_ of you,” He shoots a very significant look at Derek, who simply shrugs, not disagreeing. “And we all know you have other senses you can use, _if you remember you have them_.”

“What senses?” Erica flicks her hair out of her face, “I mean. I guess you’re not talking about taste, touch, and sight?”

“Taste, touch, and sight too, guys! But there’s more.” He pauses, never really sure how to explain this particular thought. Derek speaks before Stiles can get there, though. “He means our pack sense.”

Stiles finds himself on the receiving end of one of Derek’s least challenging, more contemplative looks, matches it with his own and then nods, “Yeah. Basically. You can all feel each other’s presence in the pack, I know that, you know that, we’ve discussed it _exhaustively_. I want you to develop it as much as you can. This is the first in many training sessions to do that.”

He gives the pack a winning grin, ignoring the groans of annoyance from Erica. Isaac echoes the noise with a falsely seductive expression, which earns him a jab to the ribs from Scott.

Stiles picks out the small glass drop and shows it to the pack, the smooth blood red surface casting ruby reflections over his fingers when the light hits it. “So, I worked some magic, put a little whammy in each of the stones. Each stash has a bunch of ‘em, and each stone is magicked with one of your, uh, signatures.”

Erica, Isaac, and Scott all give him dubious looks, but it’s Boyd who speaks, with a raised eyebrow and questioning tone. “Signatures?”

Stiles shrugs. “Eh, for want of a better term? I tried to mimic the way you all feel in the pack. So - to make sure I got that right, take a go with this first. See if you can figure out who it is, but don’t say anything yet.”

He tosses the little glass drop to Isaac, who catches it and holds it up, sniffs at it, with his eyebrows raised. Erica reaches over from her perch beside Boyd and cuffs him round the back of the head. “He just _said_ no sniffing, dumbass.”

Stiles sits back and watches as they each take a turn, with varying expressions on their faces. The stone goes from Isaac to Scott, to Erica, to Boyd - then to Lydia, who steals it from Boyd’s grasp, holds it for a moment and twitches a smile at Stiles - before handing it over to Derek, who holds it only briefly before flicking it back at him with a smirk and quirked eyebrow. _Of course_ the mighty alpha is already pretty adept at this little trick. Stiles is not surprised. Nope. He also didn’t fumble that catch. He is _not_ a klutz, dammit.

Stiles tucks the stone back in the ring box, the ring box back in his pocket, “So. Consensus?”

The wolves all give each other apprehensive looks, shifting as if uncomfortable. Apparently no one wants to go first and from the look on his face, Derek wants to see who everyone else thinks it is before he speaks up. Stiles sighs and points a finger at Scott, “Dude, who did you think it was?”

Scott pushes a hand through his hair, “Uh. Isaac? Felt kinda like Isaac.”

That breaks the dam, thankfully, and suddenly everyone’s excitedly chattering about what they felt - or didn’t feel - when they held the little stone. Isaac admits he’d recognised himself in the stone and is preening under all the attention.

Stiles had used Isaac’s signature as a test of himself, as well as the wolves - could he capture Isaac in such a way that everyone else would recognise him? It’s not like Stiles’ feelings about the guy are exactly simple or easy to capture, even now, when the pack is basically a second family. Apparently, though, he can. Which bodes well for the rest of the stones.

\---

The task is a mix of traditional treasure hunt, real tracking skills, and using the pack senses that they all have. Stiles hopes that they at least have a little fun, as well, while learning their lessons.

The human members of the pack gather on the porch again, as Stiles casts the spell - a few simple words and a flair of magic from the little amulette Gotilda had leant him for the occasion - and Derek takes off into the trees. The wolves are going to stagger their take-offs. Derek first, followed by Boyd five minutes later, then at five minute intervals Scott, Erica and then Isaac.

Each of the betas are testing out the effects of the spell as they wait for their turn, attempting to sniff at each other, rubbing at their ears. Only Boyd seems unfazed, though Scott calms down the quickest of the rest of them.

Stiles hadn’t been sure if using his own magic would make the spell too strong, last too long or even - and this is what had worried him most - make it permanent. So he’d decided to rely on the sort of magic Gotilda and Lydia use. Watching the way the wolves are reacting, he’s certain he made the right choice.

He’s come a long way with his magic since that first foray into it with the mountain ash. He’s trained with Deaton, researched on his own, pestered Gotilda for her more reliable, more trustworthy contacts so he can pester them as well, pestered Cora’s Alpha, Orenda, for any information they have, even gone so far as to request, and been granted, admittance into the Argent’s library of information. He’s practiced and practiced and researched and tried and failed and practiced again, until he developed a small arsenal of spells that he can use in a pinch.

No one has yet seen fit to explain to him _why_ his magic is different. Deaton had said he has a spark, still refers to his magic that way sometimes, but they both know that’s not all it is. He’s still not even sure he _wants_ to know, _wants_ to delve that deeply into it. He’s just Stiles. The Sheriff’s son. The kid with the motor mouth, who lost his mom too soon and still isn’t taking it well. The human whose best friend got bit by a wolf one night, all because he couldn’t keep his nose out of things that didn’t concern him.

But...he keeps working at it, because it’s useful. He can help. _Has_ helped. And the more he knows, the more help he can be. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that there’s a certain amount of thrill and adventure to this magic thing.

Rubbing one hand vigorously over his head, ruffling his longer-than-usual hair into an unruly mop,  he decides to give another spell a try. A harder one. One that might be a little weird, if done wrong. Or that might react strangely to his personal brand of magic. He wants to see how the wolves are doing, wants to know if there’s anything he missed. And, well, he’s also been looking for an excuse to try this particular spell.

“Lydia? Light of my life? Fiery Goddess?” As he makes his way up to the porch, he flips the book open to one of the larger bookmarks, a much folded piece of printer paper, covered in his scrawled notes. He reads over the text, eyes trained on the required incantation and state of mind.

Lydia slips down onto the porch steps next to him as he drops onto one of the lower ones. She brushes away some leaves, a few sequins suddenly glinting in the air as they join the leaves, then folds her skirts primly and tosses her hair back as she says, “One of these days, you’ll learn how to ask for something without buttering me up first. Not that it’s not appreciated.”

Danny - who rolls his eyes, lips quirking with badly hidden mirth as he apparently overhears Lydia’s comment - and Allison stay seated further back on the weather stained decking, but watch with interest clear on their faces, attention divided between the remaining betas and the conversation between Lydia and himself.

Stiles grins easily. He may have let go of his romantic feelings for Lydia a long time ago, but he still loves her, she’s still one of the best women he knows. “The day I stop buttering you up with _much_ deserved flattery, well - I dunno what, but it’ll be a dark day, mark my words.” He pauses, turns more serious. “I want to try something out. So I can see what’s going on. But-” He stalls, unsure how to continue.

Lydia rolls her eyes and offers him one of her superior smiles, “You want a _second_ , to pull you out if something goes wrong. Fine, Stilinski, but if this works? I want you to share.” She wiggles her perfectly manicured fingers at his book.

“Absolutely!” He’s got no problems sharing the spells he learns with Lydia. He doesn’t share with Gotilda, unless the spells are basically benign; he still doesn’t trust her all that much, despite the help she offers in attempts to get in the pack’s good graces. Lydia, though. He’s happy to share most things with her, and this spell is no different. So long as it works, anyway.

“Alright - so, I haven’t actually tried this one before. So, uh, I’m not sure what’s going to happen? Probably nothing much, though. It’s just a viewing spell.”

Lydia drops the superior smirk at this and frowns at him instead, “Stiles...” He tries to interrupt whatever admonishment she’s going to make, but she speaks over him, “Stiles if this goes wrong in any fashion, I reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’ as often as I please. I _will not_ let you live it down. This is an unpracticed spell casting. If the pack could hear you right now...” She purses her lips at him.

Stiles rolls his eyes, dismissive of anything she’s trying to imply with that statement. He doesn’t think anything dangerous could happen, but with his magic, he’s never actually a hundred percent sure...he’s pretty sure it’ll be fine and doesn’t want to alarm her more than she already has been, so he keeps his mouth shut about it. “So let’s get started!”

\---

There’s a gentle tug at his navel, blue-white light filters through his lids and Stiles opens his eyes.

The world is muted, soft, everything blurring at the edges, melding together into shapeless patches of light and dark in the distance. He’s standing, or something approximate considering he doesn’t appear to have a body, a few short feet from Derek and even this close, the alpha is fuzzy, the details of his form faded, barely noticeable, mere hints at suggestions of things he knows should be there.

He can’t smell anything, can’t feel anything, but he can hear a little. It’s like someone stuffed his ears up with cotton wool; he can hear if he strains, but it’s hard work and even as he tries he can feel a headache developing, throbbing at his temples in time with his pulse.

Derek crouches low, fingers brushing through the leaf litter and twigs, he has one ring box in his free hand and the lumps in his pockets suggest at least two more, but he looks frustrated, almost annoyed. Stiles stays still, watching, eyes wide as he glances quickly around, assessing the location. For a split-second, he thinks he sees a startling flash of red high in the trees above them, sharp and bright in contrast to the rest of the world, but it’s gone when he flicks his gaze back.

Derek glances up briefly before standing again, shoving the ring box into one of his pockets and heading in... _entirely the wrong direction_. Stiles follows, confused. They pass a mark he made on a tree - a rough scrape at the thick bark, with no real definable shape to it - that Derek touches briefly with outstretched fingers, and Stiles pauses, trying to figure out what feels wrong. It takes him far longer than it should to figure out that the mark has been _moved_ somehow. It’s shifted completely, reformed, settled on the far side of the tree and it’s leading Derek the wrong way.

Now that he knows, he looks for and finds other marks he’s left - all made with his fingers or his shoes, on tree trunks, in the dirt, some broken twigs on the larger bushes, all things that a tracker should be able to read, things he’s tried to keep subtle yet noticeable if you know what to look for.

He had planned this meticulously, remembers where each mark is placed. This is _wrong_. They’ve all been moved or shifted slightly, all changing the outcome of Derek’s reading, leading him astray.

Derek stiffens suddenly, claws sliding free from blunt fingertips, and he stares into the underbrush. This time Stiles sees it almost clearly. The flash of red is moving through the branches, far too fast even for a rodent or small bird - and it looks... Before he can make his mind up as to _what_ it looks like, Derek is lunging at the bush, swiping at the lower branches where the thing is moving - and it’s gone.

Derek relaxes, bit by bit, his shoulders staying tense though, even after he retracts the claws. After a pause, he rubs a hand through his hair and shakes his head, looks around, confusion clear on his face. Stiles watches for a moment longer as Derek turns away from the underbrush and goes back to his hunting.

Stiles blinks and when he opens his eyes, he’s standing a few feet from Boyd’s left shoulder. He’s got two ring boxes in one large hand and seems to be on the hunt for the third.

Boyd is... Actually, he’s not sure what Boyd is doing, other than crouching down and staring at the tangled roots of the large tree in front of them both. Stiles takes a few steps closer and leans down a little to see if he can see what has Boyd so interested.

There’s a small pile of brightly coloured glass stones gathered together in a protected indentation, surrounded and sheltered by thick roots. It is decidedly not one of his hidden stashes, he’d definitely remember this if he’d done it. There’s no signature radiating from any of the stones, though there is a trace hint of something else. Stiles can’t figure out what it is, makes a mental note to come and find this little collection later so he can figure it out.

Boyd reaches out and taps the topmost stone in the pile with one finger, then watches with a serene expression on his face as the pile tumbles and scatters, the muted light sending equally muted rainbow reflections in every direction. Stiles frowns and he swears he can see some tiny red sequins mixed in with the stones, glinting under the same light.

After a moment of contemplation, Boyd stands, Stiles following suit and stepping aside to keep the stones in his view. His sideways step is the only thing that allows him to avoid the much larger man as he suddenly stumbles with a wordless cry of dismay and tumbles to the ground in a heap.

‘ _What the fuck..._ ’ Stiles apparently doesn’t have an actual voice like this, but he’s speaking anyway, shock coursing through his system at the sight of the most unflappable member of the pack face-planting so suddenly.

Boyd sits up and stares at his feet with an incredulous expression. Then Stiles sees it - someone’s tied Boyd’s shoelaces together.

Stiles looks around the nearby trees and bushes suspiciously, but sees nothing out of the ordinary. No movement, no flashes of red. He turns back just in time to see Boyd break out into deep, belly lifting laughter. The sound is muffled, low, but he can hear it all the same, and he hasn’t heard this particular wolf laugh in quite some time. It’s almost more of a shock than the shoelaces.

‘ _Well I’m glad he’s enjoying himself at least_ ’ he mutters unheard as, still laughing, Boyd untangles his laces and climbs back to his feet.

Stiles blinks again and this time he opens his eyes and he’s sitting with Scott.

Who is halfway up a tree, rooting in a hollow with a very disturbed look on his face.

‘ _Dude, this is the wrong tree.._.’ Stiles watches as Scott’s expression changes from disturbed to disgusted then to jubilant as he pulls out the canvas bag Stiles had used for the third stash. It’s covered in wet dead leaves and more than a little damp mud, which smears everywhere. Scott sits back on his branch, opens the bag and frowns down into it for a moment.

‘ _Seriously. How did that even get up here._ ’

He watches as Scott picks out each of the ring boxes, carefully balancing them on his thighs. He can tell they’re the right ones, unlike Boyd’s suspicious little pile they’re all gently signalling their respective pack members. Just to be a dick about it, Stiles had actually added one or two extras to each stash - as human members, he, Lydia, Danny and Allison don’t have true pack signatures, but they do all register to Stiles, and he had wondered if they did to the wolves in some other way as well.

He gets his answer when Scott picks one of the boxes up and gives it a dopey smile, obviously the Allison stone. Stiles rolls his eyes, but doesn’t fight his own small smile at his best friend’s antics.

Scott jerks suddenly, letting out a yelp of surprise and almost dropping all the boxes, as if he’d been unexpectedly hit with something. Stiles looks around, surprised, to see a Buckeye seed disappearing into the haze below the tree. Scott scrabbles to get all the boxes back in the canvas bag, almost dropping them,  under a sudden rain of pine cones and Buckeye seeds.

It’s more than a little disconcerting to see the cones and seeds appearing out of nowhere, pelting Scott from every angle as he scrabbles back down the tree, canvas bag in his teeth, claws leaving large gashes in the tree trunk. Stiles simply falls gently from the branch to the ground beneath without any interference, either from the branches or the projectiles. The seeds and cones are passing through him and hitting Scott or the tree with resounding thunks that he can just about hear through the spell.

‘ _Dude, you have to put that back!_ ’ Stiles yells futilely as Scott dashes into the trees away from the rain of cones and seeds, the bag clutched to his chest.

He blinks and finds himself with not one but two of the wolves.

Isaac and Erica are making annoyed gestures at each other, muttering things under their breath despite neither being able to hear. Even as he watches, they’re getting increasingly frustrated, visibly angry, gestures growing more violent with each passing second. How they managed to end up together, when this training exercise is meant to be solo, Stiles will have to ask them when they all get back. He makes a mental note to look into a way of communicating silently as well, because watching these two attempt to argue without their usual voluminous voices as they try to drown each other out is just disturbing, and kind of sad.

Stiles doesn’t actually know where they are, either. He looks around and sees nothing even remotely like any marks he’d made. He wonders how the hell they managed to get so completely turned around, and if perhaps _that’s_ how they ended up together in the first place. He wasn’t anywhere near anything like this when he’d set the course up.

On the upside, it looks like they both have one stone each, so they must at least have found the first stash.

On the downside, they’re in the middle of a very large patch of bramble entangled bushes, and they both look like they’ve lost a couple chunks of their hair. Small stains and splashes of blood on their clothing, visible even through the hase of the spell, are the only evidence left behind that they’ve also been torn up a bit by the wicked-looking thorns.

Isaac apparently loses his temper entirely, because suddenly he’s lunging and clawing at the thorn bushes, slicing himself a way out of the tangled mass. Erica throws her hands in the air with a growl that Stiles can almost hear clearly, and follows. Branches, vines, leaves and thorns are flying in every direction as Isaac takes out his frustration on the hapless plants, the debris barely missing Erica, who absently bats anything that gets to close out of the air with her own claws.

Stiles watches, incredulous and worried, as Isaac and Erica move in a large meandering circle, _with the plants re-growing behind them_. Thorn-laden tendrils steadily creep across the path and branches slide through the air sprouting leaves as the brambles curl up and around them, creating new curtains of growth where Isaac has just torn them down.

From the very corner of his vision, Stiles sees a tiny flash of brilliant red; he spins to see if he can catch it, but it’s gone before he even finishes turning.  

A few short moments later, Erica happens to look back and notices the regrowth behind them. She grabs at Isaac’s shirt, forces him to stop and look around. They finally notice that they’ve been going in circles when they both spot the debris surrounding them, hanging in the new branches and coating the soft forest floor. They stop looking angry and start looking freaked.

As the two wolves are tearing their way through the thorns again, this time thankfully in a straight line, Stiles shakes his head, silently watching the mess they’re making. ‘ _This is getting really far beyond odd, right now..._ ’

He decides to head home and feels a slight wrenching at his navel as he takes the thread of his magic, unknots the weave of the spell, quickly shutting it off. It barely registers, but he feels it all the same and wonders what it is.

When he opens his eyes a moment later, Lydia is ranting loudly, panicky, somewhere off to his right where he’s lying on the porch with an immense headache and Derek is glaring down at him, dripping actual mud.

Oh. So the thing he’d worried _might_ happen, kinda did.

\---

“And you couldn’t just wait for us to tell you? You had to fuck around with a spell you’ve never tried before? Knowing it could be dangerous?”

Something about the way Derek sounds more disappointed than angry right now has Stiles’ hackles up. It might also have something to do with the blinding headache, but it’s mostly the look Derek is giving him. And Scott’s judging face. And Lydia’s I-told-you-so thousand yard glare, which she’d turned on him the moment she finished undoing the sensory spell for the wolves.

“Can we just... talk about this later? When I’m not -” he waves a hand vaguely at his head, trying to get across the sheer amount of pain he is currently in. “After we’ve talked about, I dunno, the fairies, or whatever they were, fucking up my beautifully laid plans?” He’s kinda hating the way his voice sounds pretty plaintive right now.

Derek looks angry, suddenly, but nods anyway. After a pause, Scott backs off as well, but not before pressing a hand to Stiles shoulder, telling him, “You gotta stop scaring me, man.”

Stiles pushes his face into his hands, hoping a little outside pressure will ease some of the pain, but it doesn’t. Because Alison is awesome, when he blinks his eyes open against the sunlight a long moment later, she’s sitting near him and offering him tylenol and a water bottle. He takes both with a grateful sigh.

“So, fairies? And... verdict on the whole training thing?” He pops a pill and swallows it down as he waits for responses.

Isaac and Erica, both in even more of a mess than they were when he’d watched them fighting their way out of the brambles (which, really, was there some sort of time thing going on as well? He needs to look into that), leaves and twigs in their hair, light blood splatters on their clothing, share a glance and shrug. Erica makes faces at Isaac until he opens his mouth and explains. “It was a pain in the ass? It’s hard, working without scent, worse without hearing... But it was fine ‘til I got lost in the thorns. Didn’t see any fairies, though.”

Erica nods, “The whole thing was a _colossal_ pain in the ass. If I wanted to go for the punk look, I’d shop at Hot Topic.” She picks at the tears in her jacket, her jeggings, showing off the ragged holes, though the scratches beneath them have long since healed.

Boyd rolls his eyes at her, getting a grin in response, but before anyone can tell them to get a room, he rolls his shoulders and says “I didn’t have any problems. It was good practice. Whatever was playing with us mostly left me alone.” He does look the least ruffled of all the wolves, to Stiles’ considering, if currently squinty, gaze.

“Scott? Derek?” Stiles looks at them, wanting their contributions.

Scott’s got pieces of pine cone in his hair, clinging to his shirt, and he’s still carrying the third canvas bag, mud now dry where it’s smeared thinly over his hands, forearms, chest and even a little on his face.

“I... actually thought the cones were part of the exercise?” He looks thoroughly amused to be admitting this. “It seemed like something you’d do. Element of surprise kinda thing. I didn’t see any fairies though.” Stiles snorts at him, but Scott quickly continues, “The hearing and scent thing was weird. We should do it again, definitely.”

For his part, Derek is covered almost head to toe in still drying mud. He looks like someone dumped an entire bucket of the stuff on his head. Somehow, he still manages to look menacing, arms crossed over his chest again, hair slicked back in muddy waves. Attempts to clean the mud off his face has left him looking like he’s wearing battlepaint.

“The hunting was fine. The ‘ _fairies_ ’,” and the way he says that word leaves no doubt in Stiles mind that he is very pissed at whatever they are, “let me see them once. They were too fast, all I saw was... red. A bright flash of red, moving through the branches.”

Lydia makes an impatient noise, “It might not actually be fairies. Not the type everyone’s probably thinking of anyway.” At least she’s still willing to talk and contribute, considering the apparent scare he’d given her.

Stiles nods, still carefully holding his head. “Yeah. The books are pretty conclusive on the whole ‘fairy is a collective name for hundreds of different Fair Folk’ thing.”

“So it could be anything?” Danny asks, and his voice carries such a clear hint of worry that it makes Stiles open his eyes and look over at him as he continues, “Did it seem... malicious?”

Derek shakes his head, brows drawn together in thought. “No. Ridiculous. Playful. Unhinged maybe, but not malicious.”

“Well that should help identify it,” Stiles says with a tired smile. “Bright red, unhinged and playful. And uh, Small Magics, I think?” He looks to Lydia for confirmation and she nods, “The wards pinged,” she explains, “They registered something going on, but not a big something. So it was definitely Small Magics.”

“Re-growing plants was ‘small magics’?” Erica says with an incredulous expression.

Stiles shrugs. “Yeah. That’s easy stuff, really. Unless you’re controlling entire forests, or making them do more than just grow. The plants want to grow anyway, you just nudge them to do it a little faster.”

Stiles blinks at the looks he gets for that. “Small Magics doesn’t mean...” He waves a hand lethargically, not in the mood to explain what he’s been learning about magic and how it works right now. “Y’know what - can I go home now? I think I need to sleep for a week.”

\---

Somehow, Stiles ends up with Derek driving him home in his Jeep. The driving he doesn’t mind so much. And his poor Jeep has seen worse than flaking dry mud, so that doesn’t bother him either - at least it’s not blood this time. The angry silence and pissed off eyebrows are really bothering him, though.

After a full five minutes of silence, Stiles finally breaks. His head feels worse than that time Finstock stuck him in goal and Jackson started taking pot-shots. He feels drained, and he really does just want to go to sleep, but the silence is killing him. “You need to teach your betas sign language or something.”

“What.” Derek doesn’t even take his eyes off the road, his voice flat and unimpressed.

“Dude, that wasn’t even a question,” he says tiredly. “Sign language. Hand signals. Silent communication that isn’t of the starry-eyed lovers sort. You all need to learn it, all of you, because watching Erica and Isaac trying to communicate while deaf was hilariously sad.”

Derek glances at him, the frown relaxing very slightly. He nods. “Alright. But in return, don’t mess around with powerful spells unsupervised again. Or-” he breaks into Stiles attempt to tell him where to shove it, “At _least_ warn us? We need to know if you could get hurt, Stiles.”

“ _Right_. Because you need me to -”

His poor Jeep’s steering wheel squeaks alarmingly, just as Derek interrupts. “Because we _care_ , Stiles. This isn’t about need or usefulness. You have to tell us if something could go wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong! I used a bit more power than I thought, that’s all. Ok? _Stop_ \- I dunno - treating me like I’m gonna _break_. Everything’s fine. _I’m_ fine. Can we drop it?”

The silence after his assertion is oppressive. Angry doesn’t cover it. This time Derek breaks it with an annoyed huff, and his voice is obviously very carefully controlled as he says, “According to Lydia, the very second you finished the incantation, you were dead weight. Lifeless. For _thirty minutes_ , Stiles. _She thought you were dead_.”

Stiles winces, runs his hands through his hair. He hadn’t intended that at all. He’s actually surprised Lydia had kept her thoughts to herself, apart from the glare and the fierce hug before she’d left with Danny. He suspects she’ll be giving him a piece of her mind sometime soon, though.

“Alright. So it had unexpected side effects. I probably should have factored in that my magic doesn’t work like Lydia’s, ok? But it’s just a viewing spell. And I’m _fine_.”

Derek looks away from the road, gives him an assessing look with the frown making an appearance again, before turning back, “You keep forgetting you can’t lie to us. Whatever that spell did, it definitely wasn’t what you intended... you should talk to Deaton about it.”

Stiles slumps further into the seat, barely restrains himself from bashing his head against the glass in frustration. “I _don’t_ need to talk to Deaton. It’s not like I plan to use it again any time soon.”

“ _Stiles_. For gods sake...”

“ _No_.”

The rest of the drive happens in sullen silence on Stiles part and angry silence on Derek’s. When they pull into the drive and see the Sheriff’s car is there, Stiles barely stops to collect his keys from a still-scowling Derek before he’s inside and falling unceremoniously face-first onto the sofa, trusting his dad to get what he needs from the ornery alpha.

He can vaguely hear his dad and Derek talking quietly, but he doesn’t pay attention, just closes his eyes and mashes his face into the worn and faded cushion, blocking out the light and trying to soothe his still-aching head.

A short while later he hears the front door close and then feels a pressure on the sofa as his dad sits next to him. He scoots very slightly sideways to give him a bit more room, then sighs as the Sheriff places a gentle hand in his hair, strokes it back like he had when Stiles was very young.

“Over-extended yourself, huh kid?” His dad keeps his voice low and Stiles just harrumphs into the cushion. Some time later, he drops easily into sleep with his dad still there, one large, reassuring hand resting between his shoulderblades.

\---

The smell of fresh baked bread wafts from the open windows of the bakery into the early morning air, warm and savory in the slight chill of the pale morning, enticing in the slightly harried customers during their commutes to work.

The head chef and day manager makes her rounds, checking the stacks of loaves, bagels and buns as they are pulled from the enormous ovens. Satisfied, she moves on to the confectionaries, checks each shelf of fresh cakes, watches with a discerning eye as the new girl expertly ices and decorates the cupcakes.

She makes a quick check of the baristas supplies, makes sure there are enough coffee grounds, tea, chocolate powder, coffee syrups, and fresh fruit for the smoothies. This work’s already been done, but she feels the need to double check today. She nods, appeased, and signals to one of the younger waiters. He opens the doors and customers start pouring in.

“Leonard! Good morning.” She smiles as her favorite regular comes in behind a group of office workers, his battered satchel in one hand, coupon and wallet in the other. He makes his usual rounds of the shelves, glaring half-heartedly at the selections, before picking up his usual pre-wrapped cheese bagel and hustling up behind some tittering high school students out before their early morning classes.

“It will be, when I get my caffeine, Ms. Helen.” Leonard’s drawl bring’s a smile to her lips. She turns to make him the particular coffee he likes, humming to herself as he grumbles not quite under his breath about the teenagers at the register.

By the time she hands his coffee over, the teenagers have congregated just outside the door, talking loudly and animatedly. Leonard takes his cup with eager hands, pays at the register. She takes out the ink to stamp a little red logo on his coupon as he takes his first sip with the beatific expression he always adopts, “Try not to upset any interns today, Leonard-”

The sudden spluttering interrupts her and she looks up, hands still in the process of stamping the fresh red ink. Leonard is giving his cup a very surly look, “Are you sure this is my usual, Ms H?”

She finishes the stamp, hands him the coupon, “Of course. I made it myself. What’s wrong?”

A sudden chorus of coughing and gagging from the teenagers catches their attention before he can explain. The teenagers are spitting their drinks on the sidewalk, opening their paper bags and pulling disgusted faces, sniffing and coughing, spluttering immediately.

“What...?” Helen and Leonard look around, noting the rest of the so recently satisfied customers, seeing more expressions of shock and disgust, more spat out drinks, more bags hastily scrunched closed to hide the contents. The scent of fresh bread in the air suddenly sours, and Helen coughs, covers her nose and mouth, turning to see the bakery staff all doing the same as they pull out trays of what should be fresh bread from the cooling racks, the loaves now covered in a layer of furry white and green mold.

She turns to the rest of the store, only to find every single item on the shelves, in the open trays, in the refrigerated units, everything that she had checked only minutes before, is now in similar states of decay. The fruit for the smoothies is slimy, stinking - the coffee grounds smell stale. An entire day’s worth of product destroyed in seconds, a day’s worth of profit gone.

The less hardy customers are covering their noses with hands, sleeves or even pulled up shirts, all backing away and leaving hastily. One or two are approaching her baristas, making complaints, demanding their money back.

A rush of movement out on the street has her looking through the wide street-side window. Customers are pouring from the cafe across the street, similar expressions of disgust on their faces, in their movements. Yet further down the street, a diner is losing customers just as quickly, people tumbling out the doors with shocked, horror stricken expressions.

“What the hell is going on?” She turns to Leonard, incredulous and a little green, even as she covers her own nose. The man simply shrugs his shoulders, eyes wide as he takes in the upset, reeling and complaining customers around them.

\---

Scott pokes him in the back of the head before sliding into the free seat next to him in the cafeteria. Lunch is already half over, so Stiles glares half-heartedly, rubbing at the now tingling spot. “Dude. What? Where have you been?”

“Have you seen Williams?”

“‘Have I seen Williams?’ he asks. Why?  Has he come out as the The Master at last, so Alison can go all Chosen One on his ass?” Stiles raises his eyebrows at Scott and stuffs a handful of soggy fries in his mouth. Scott frowns in confusion for a moment, then shakes his head as comprehension dawns. “Seriously, Stiles. Something weird’s going on. Again.”

Stiles blinks, slowly. Then he lifts his eyebrows again, before poking a french fry in Scott’s direction. “I think that just takes the cake for least informative statement ever. And we’ve known _Derek Hale_ for over two years.”

Scott rolls his eyes at him, bites into the sandwich he’d brought with him for lunch. Then, with his mouth still full of half masticated food, he says, “I mean, you know the coffee thing the other day-”

Stiles pulls a face at the view as he says, “In _excruciating_ detail. Yes.” The entire Sheriff’s Department had gone into caffeine withdrawal as a result of whatever _that_ was. His dad hadn’t been able to stop complaining about it for the whole two days it took to get new supplies to all the local restaurants, cafes, diners and even every single shopping mart and corner store in the town. It had been a little too much like hell for Stiles’ comfort.

Scott shares a sympathetic smile with him, Mrs McCall had apparently complained just as much. “Well, yeah, that. Except now it looks like everyone’s glasses are missing.”

Stiles snorts, “Are you telling me, Scott McCall, buddy of mine, that Williams is wandering around his classroom bumping into things, a hilarious turn of events worthy of pictorial documentation, _and it’s taken you this long to tell me?_ ”

Scott grins. “Uh, yes?”

“We _must_ get pictures. Or video. Or _both_. For posterity!” He whoops with abandon, grinning widely.

“Because _that’s_ the important thing to take away from this news.”

Stiles gapes a little as Lydia sits across from him, sliding her tray neatly onto the table with a serene expression. He’s a little surprised, and more than a little happy, that she’s talking to him again. It’s been just over four days since the training exercise and she hasn’t so much as looked at him in all that time. He gives her a tentative smile, which she acknowledges with a small nod.

Alison slides into the seat across from Scott, giving them both a bright smile. “It’s not just Williams. Everyone who wears glasses has suddenly lost them. Some of the girls from gym were complaining about their spare contacts going missing as well,” she confides with a conspiratorial air.

“See? Weird,” Scott says with a smug grin and Stiles could swear he’s preening.

“Yes, yes, alright, so we have more things to go on the list.” His research on the subject of what their annoying fairy friends are hasn’t been going well. At least nothing deadly has happened yet. Which is a minor miracle in his opinion, considering both the fact that this is Beacon Hills, deadly supernatural killing machines sinkhole of the West Coast, and that most of the folk stories and research he’s read has said fae folk are a bit on the bloody side.

A resounding crash from the far side of the cafeteria, followed by a burst of hastily muffled crying, has them all craning to look. One of the smaller freshman boys is sitting on the tiles, hands in his hair, surrounded by a mess of food and broken crockery, his miraculously still-whole glass spinning a few feet from him.

They watch as some of his classmates help him up and a cafeteria worker goes to his aid, another disappearing out the door, probably in search of a teacher or the school nurse. After a moment, the cafeteria breaks back out into it’s usual level of noise, though if Stiles is hearing right, a lot more conversations about missing glasses are going on now.

Scott clears his throat, his head tilted slightly in the manner he adopts when he’s listening in on something he shouldn’t be able to hear. “He didn’t see the chair leg? I think. He hasn’t got his glasses today. He’s not the only one, one of the girls is - she couldn’t find hers either.”

Stiles watches as the cafeteria worker helps the kid to a seat and the Nurse comes in and hastens to his side. “We really need to figure this out.”

“If accidents like this are happening, just in a school? Imagine what must be happening out there...” Alison says. Her gaze is distant, voice soft, and she looks like she’s imagining it.

Stiles’ imagination is sometimes too good, and he’s automatically picturing car accidents and surgeries going wrong, plenty of red splashed about, which he realizes has more to do with his own experiences in recent years than the day-to-day reality of the everyday Joe. He shakes his head, “Surely people with _really sucky_ sight will have stayed home? Right?”

Scott pulls a face as he says, “I dunno, that kid came in today.” He jerks his chin in the direction of the kid, who’s now stopped crying at least. “I’d definitely have stayed home, though.”

Lydia snorts inelegantly. “Any adult with eyesight as bad as that boy, and who has half a brain, will be staying out of trouble.”

“Which means _everyone_ will be at work anyway,” Stiles can’t help but mutter, because that’s just their luck.

\---

Lydia grabs his arm and steers him to a quiet corner of the school between one class and the next. She’s ready to chew him out at last, then. Stiles resigns himself to it, lets her drag him along until she’s satisfied no-one can overhear.

They stand in silence for a moment, crowded into the smoker’s corner where, within days of joining the school, everyone quickly works out no cameras can see you. Stiles rubs briefly at the back of his neck as Lydia gives him one of her more superior looks, genteelly flicking her hair back over her shoulder.

He’s still not good at silences, and very quickly breaks. “Alright, so it was a mistake, we all know I’m made of mistakes. Mistakes and stupidity and recklessness and far too many words and I’ve totally learned my lesson-” Lydia presses a perfectly manicured finger to his lips to shut him up. He stops talking, bites his lip instead, and loosely crosses his arms over his chest, squeezing his own biceps as he does.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, avoiding her eyes, his shoulders slumping.

If she were any less of the woman he knows she is, he’s pretty sure she’d have given into a snort right then. But she doesn’t; instead, he sees the way her fingers tighten on the folders and books in her arms, the skin going white, sees the way her lips purse, her back straightens.

“Stiles. I know no one likes to talk about these things, god knows I certainly don’t, but what you did on Saturday...” She shakes her head, gives him a smile that’s all teeth and no humour. “You left me out of things. Again. And we all know how I feel about that.”

Stiles gapes a little. “I - but - I didn’t leave you out of anything! You were right there - I even-”

Lydia jerks her head once, anger flashing in her eyes, and she cuts him off, “No, Stiles. You don’t get to do that. Not now. Not ever. You asked for a second and didn’t explain exactly why. Exactly what you were doing.” She gives him a fierce look. “You _do not_ get to keep things like this from me. Not anymore.”

Stiles blinks, further dumbfounded. He hadn’t made the connection, hadn’t thought of it that way. She’s right though, after the weeks of exclusion, mental torture and confusion she went through after Peter died and before Jackson was revealed. For all of their choices to not tell her what was happening. He’d promised her they wouldn’t do it again.

“I’m sorry. I hadn’t - I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. I’m an asshole.” He tries an apologetic smile.

“You are,” she says with an accepting smile in return, and then continues in a firm tone, “I’m still angry, Stiles. Don’t do it again, or I will have to leave. I cannot, _will_ not, let that happen to me again.” She pauses, then says a little more firmly, “You understand.”

Stiles nods. He does. He really does. And he is such an asshole. Jesus. Nodding in return, her expression less angry now, Lydia steps forward and pats him on the chest. “Just remember that you need me around. No one else is as good as I am at stopping you from being stupid.”

Stiles gives in and hooks one arm around her shoulders in a quick embrace that he tops off with a brief press of his lips to her hair. “I’ll remember.”

Lydia gently squeezes his wrist before disengaging and stepping away, visibly pulling her armor back into place.

They’re only a minute late to Math.

\---

The alarm clock goes off, the shrill beeping resounding around the room. The owner of the room, a man in his mid-thirties with floppy hair and lanky limbs, sits straight up, his eyes still closed, and grabs the clock, switching it off with fumbling fingers. He blinks and stares for a moment at the red sequin he finds stuck to his finger, then flicks it away and crawls out of bed.

He blearily makes his way through his morning routine then settles in the kitchen, tapping a pen against the counter as the coffee slowly percolates. The house is silent apart from the machine and the rustling of the newspaper as he reads. A crashing sound from the house next door has him looking up through the small window, just in time to catch his neighbour rushing through his front door, still pulling on his jacket and tugging at his tie as he runs hell for leather in the direction of the nearest bus stop.

He frowns, then shakes his head and gets on with waiting for his coffee.

Twenty minutes later, finally awake and properly caffeinated, he climbs into his car and starts the commute to work. As he pulls out of the street he lives on, he glances at the dashboard clock. “The fuck?”

The clock is ten minutes behind. He checks it against his watch, and swears again as that clock is telling him he’s twenty minutes early. Frowning harder now, he turns the radio on to the local station, waits for them to mention the time.

He has to suffer through a slew of awful pop drivel and celebrity gossip before they finally get around to it. According to them, he’s possibly an hour late, but they don’t sound certain. He swears once more, checks his watch and the dashboard clock again and shakes his head. As he pulls onto Main Street he switches to the University station from the next town over, has to fiddle with the settings to do so and swears again when they inform him, ten minutes and three awful pop songs later that he is, in fact, actually thirty minutes early.

He pulls up to the sidewalk, parks and sits for a moment. He glances around, at the other commuters, the high schoolers and co-eds, the people going to or from work. Almost all of them are checking their watches, their cellphones, or looking at the clocks in the stores around them. He looks up at the large clock on the front of the old Library. It’s weather stained and rusting face is telling him he’s an hour late for work.

He pulls a notebook out of the glove compartment and makes a few scribbled notes, sucking his teeth as he does.

“Hey, mister? You got the time?” A knock to the passenger side window startles him and he rolls the pane down enough to reply, “KBAX says it’s six thirty.” The teenage girl curses, pauses and then looks back in at him: “Thanks.”

He watches as she stalks off, playing with her wrist watch as she goes.

After a moment, he makes another note then starts the car again and pulls back out, heading to work. When he arrives, he finds he’s not the only employee to be early. “Geoff!”

He looks over and nods as his rotund co-worker greets him, follows up with, “What you think of this whole broken clocks business?”

Geoff shrugs, fumbling his backpack as they enter the elevator from the parking lot and being jostled by the night staff pushing past them as they leave, nods of acknowledgement here and there. There are more glances at watches, people fiddling with the times as they cross paths. “Probably a fuck up with the local power company,” he says with certainty.

His co-worker laughs, apparently delighted, “What seems like every clock in town is out by, what, anywhere between ten minutes and an hour, and you think a power fuck up did it?”

Geoff shrugs again, presses the button for their floor. “Unlike you, I’m not a conspiracy theorist.”

“Don’t have to be, Geoff. This is just fuckin’ weird. Maybe the Government’s testing some sort of EMP wave? Or a new type of radiation!”

“Yes, Andy. Because the Government would do that to a small town in California.” Geoff rolls his eyes dramatically. “Or better yet, Aliens did it and the Government is now going to cover it up.” He snorts. “Keep an eye out for MIBs,” he says with a spooky twang to his tone.

Andy glares a little, but then breaks out into a grin again. “Could be. There was that whole thing with the fresh food and drinks on Monday. Bad couple days for coffee drinkers, man.”

Geoff rolls his eyes again, as the doors open and they step out side-by-side. “A few bad deliveries coinciding is far more likely than Aliens fucking with us, or the Government testing things on us, and you know it.”

“Well what about all the glasses and contacts going missing the other day? You can’t tell me an entire population of glasses-wearing folk misplaced the things at the same time?”

Geoff sighs. “I dunno. Maybe? I’m just not jumping to outlandish conclusions on this. I’ll wait for the reports to come out and then make my mind up from there.”

Andy wrinkles his nose as they reach their desks. “You do that, buddy. I, on the other hand, will keep my mind open to the possibilities.”

Geoff snorts again. “Don’t let that brain of yours fall out, while you’re at it.” He drops his backpack on the desk, shucks his jacket and hits the power button on his computer. Andy throws a rude gesture at him as they settle in for the day and he smirks.

He pulls out the notebook from the car, drops it next to the keyboard, then digs into the note-cards and paperwork on his desk, scribbling down phone numbers and ideas for research on the subject of timepieces and their reliability as the computer boots up.

“As much as writing the news in this place has been interesting the past couple years, I’m still not sold on your supernatural explanations,” he tells Andy with a grin.

Andy simply rolls his eyes and gets back to his own work.

\---

Stiles is learning to trust his instincts - at the insistence of Deaton, Scott _and_ Derek - so when he finds himself driving up the bumpy driveway to the old Hale house well past sundown one evening, he doesn’t question it.

He pulls to a stop at the edge of the clearing, shifts into park and stops the engine. For a long moment, he sits, still and quiet, watching the house. He can never stay still for long though, so eventually he slides out, closes the door quietly and stuffs his hands in his pockets, and stands for a moment staring up at the trees, at the shadows that dance as the gentle wind blows through them. The place is a little eerie, more so than usual, and he releases an all-body shudder of nervous energy before kicking himself into motion again.

Stiles paces carefully up the lumpy lawn, eyes darting as he tries to see everything at once, watching the shadows that the clouds cast as they move slowly across the moon thousands of feet overhead, intermingling with those cast by the trees. He glances at the ground as he walks, careful not to trip.

A brilliant flash of red to his right, a stark contrast to the darkness, has him stopping, standing still and staring at the spot where he’d seen it.

Nothing more happens, so he narrows his eyes, turning to look up at the building. The Hale house is imposing in its disrepair, yet still exudes a sense of safety and comfort, memories of family and long afternoons drowsing on the porch, of hiding behind its remarkably still-sturdy shell in fearful salvation.

He waits for a long moment, fingers of his right hand playing with a glass drop, one of the few Boyd had taken from the rainbow stash that had intrigued him during the training. He’s spent too much time already trying to analyse the faint signature the glass drops are emitting; he can’t make head or tail of it. It doesn’t feel human, but it doesn’t feel like anything else they’ve encountered so far either.

Eventually, he pulls his hands out of his pockets and lets them rest, loosely, by his thighs, fingers twitching a soothing rhythm against his jeans, unintentional sparks of power flickering between them.

“Right. So, I know you’re here,” he says, voice as strong as he can manage, all false bravado, belied by the tripping of his heart. But there are no werewolves around to hear it right now, so he keeps talking. “I just don’t know what you are. Yet.”

He swallows, lifts a hand and pushes it through his hair, stares at the silent, empty-seeming house. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? All these games. The food last week? The glasses? The clocks? You want, us... _me_ to figure out who you are.”

He stares up at the house, waiting for an answer he’s pretty sure isn’t coming. The only sounds are those of the forest around him, the heartbeat in his ears, and the breath in his lungs.

There’s a feeling, suddenly, that he’s being watched. He can feel hundreds, if not more, eyes on him. Studying him, considering him. The sense of the beings nearby, within the limits of his magical personal space, is alien to him; they’re not something he’s ever felt before and there’s so many of them he can’t even begin to count them.

Thankfully, they don’t feel malicious or angry, just... old. Curious, maybe. Different, definitely. Very _other_. And there’s a distinct sense of waiting.

He glances around, catches two more hints of red, and realizes they’re deliberately showing him that much; that it’s a hint, a clue. Everything that he’s seeing, feeling, sensing right now is a clue, to help him understand. To help him figure out who they are. What they want.

They’re testing him.

He’s not sure why, or exactly what for, though he does know he’s a little sick of being tested.

“Really?” He says, a little despairingly. “This is a thing we’re doing now? You’re going to keep doing this, until I, _me_ specifically, the local spark-bearing motor mouth, figures out what, who you are?”

He gets the distinct impression of amusement from whatever he’s talking to.

He flushes, feels the heat of it rise to his cheeks, a little embarrassed and uncertain as to why, before something clicks in his brain. “ _Who_. Names. _Naming_ \- it’s a naming thing.” He feels excitement bubble through his veins, quickly followed by a calm as something else occurs to him, and he voices it, carefully, slowly: “You’re old, aren’t you?” His gaze darts around the clearing, over the front of the house. He doesn’t see anything moving, not now, but he knows he’s right.

“Whatever you are, you’re _old school_ and you won’t come out unless I can _name_ you. _True name_.” And that’s another hint in itself, knowing that they’re old enough to subscribe to the _names have power_ way of thinking.

Upon that realisation, something else calls for attention in the back of his mind. He takes a moment to worry at it, and then stops, stares at the house again, shoulders slumped.

“Oh god... is this going to be a thing?”

He rubs both hands vigorously over his head, squeezes his eyes shut tightly, briefly, before huffing out a woosh of breath.  His hands settle and grip at the back of his neck, squeezing and rubbing gently. “It is, isn’t it? This is totally going to be a thing. There’s gonna be more of you, isn’t there? I can see it now, Stiles Stilinski!” He spins around suddenly, arms flinging wide, like a circus Ring Master, open hoody flying out as he does, “Latest magical play thing of the old-schoolers! Come one, come all, see how long it takes him to snap!”

He pauses, arms dropping, tries to calm down. “Ugh.”

After a long, long moment in which he works to catch his breath, to slow his heart rate back to normal, he stuffs his hands back in his pockets, grips the little glass drop tightly and levels a glare on the house again, on whatever’s hiding within.

The whole clearing has gone silent in the wake of his outburst. The constant background hum of insects has vanished, the call of night birds is gone. It’s just him and the house, and whatever’s hiding inside it.

“Alright,” he says, far more calmly than he feels. “So... I’ll just... get on that then?”

The only answer is the return of the night sounds and a single flash of red from one of the upper floor windows. He smirks, shakes his head and turns, heading back to the jeep. He has a few more clues now, and a lot of research ahead of him.

\---

The next day, they’re attempting to beat the rush-hour crush for coffee when the next prank in the long list of pranks happens.

At first it’s almost nothing, just a glitch, that has two drivers blaring their horns at each other as they both try to cross at the same time, swerving around one another to avoid a collision.

Stiles and Scott share a glance, but as nothing else happens, they don’t remark on it. Instead, Stiles flicks through his chem book, highlighter in his teeth as he tries to prepare for the test he just knows Williams is going to throw at them soon. He’s worse than Harris ever was, and Stiles tries not to speak ill of the dead, but Harris was a _douche_.

As much as researching what the hell is going on is important, so are his grades. Scott may scoff, but Stiles knows how that man thinks, and he thinks like an evil Dark Lord that evils from the evilest side of evil world. And Stiles has plans that he refuses to let Williams fuck up just out of spite and improper use of pop quizzes.

Scott told him he’d been drinking too much coffee again when he voiced his evil dark lord opinion to him on their way here, and suggested they avoid coffee altogether. Stiles had called betrayal.  

“What’ll it be, love?” A smiling woman with the name tag ‘Helen’ catches his attention.

Stiles pulls the highlighter from his teeth. “Caramel Macchiato!”

Scott gives him a look. “Caffeine _and_ sugar?”

He pulls a ‘what’ face at him, maybe flails the book a little, before getting back to skim-reading.

When they step out the door again, Scott with a brightly colored smoothie (because caffeine doesn’t really affect him anymore so what’s the point) they’re greeted by more horns blaring, this time from the crosswalks at both ends of the block.

“D’you think that’s our ancient and mysterious friends again?” Stiles has put the book and highlighter away in favor of being able to drink the macchiato, but still manages to almost drop it when he spins as more horns start blaring what sounds like only a few blocks away.

Scott looks around, a frown pinching his brows. “Probably. We’d better make sure no one gets hurt, right?”

“What? What are we gonna do? You gonna pull a Cullen and catch a truck?” But Stiles follows after him anyway as he pads closer to the crosswalk. “I hate those books, anyway.”

It becomes obvious what the problem is when they get there. The lights are messed up. Really badly. And it’s just hit rush hour. Impatient drivers are coming in from every street, all of them looking pissed, most of them sitting on their damn horns, as if making more noise will enable the drivers in front to speed up, magically be able to drive through solid traffic as if it doesn’t exist.

Just as they get there, three cars come so close to a collision that he winces as the air is filled with the sound of squealing tires. All the noise is giving him a headache, so it must be seriously hurting Scott.

For a moment, things clear up, the lights start working properly again and traffic starts moving steadily forward. Scott and Stiles stand on the corner watching. The traffic’s pretty heavy, especially for Beacon Hills, but it’s gotten so backed up it looks worse than it normally would.

Stiles sips at his macchiato. “Maybe it was just a fuck up with the system?” Even to his own ears, that sounds like a weak plea.

Scott shrugs, shifts the weight of his backpack slightly as he rubs at his obviously sore ears. “Maybe?”

Neither of them move.  

Just as traffic is moving normally again, the lights flicker. For a handful of seconds, the only light on is the red one. Stiles glares at it.

And then all the lights are flickering, on and off, switching between colors randomly with just long enough on each color for drivers to get confused, and traffic is snarling up again. Drivers already making the crossing keep going, into lines of traffic that are suddenly trying to turn or pull out. Behind them, drivers don’t know whether to stop or keep going, some hit their brakes a second too late, some too hard, some don’t at all, some drivers still try to turn off, pull out. Everyone sits on their horns.

What ensues is the biggest, loudest and ultimately the closest pile-up Stiles has ever seen.

The macchiato hits the floor but Stiles is already gone, pulling Scott with him as he throws up a protective barrier that he is forever thankful is invisible to the mundane eye.

The noise is horrendous, horns blaring, tires squealing, voices lifting in shouts of anger or screams of fear. More than one car ends up on the sidewalk, with the sound of crushing metal and snapping cables.

When he risks looking up again from where he’d taken refuge behind a bench, Scott at his side with panic wide eyes, the whole block is in chaos. He looks around, dropping the protective shield with a careless flick of his fingers. All the crossings are jammed with cars, like a giant tetris game. Drivers are climbing out their windows and yelling, children are screaming in their seats, dogs are barking and fighting to get out of the cars or off their leashes, steam rises from at least half the engines present and everyone looks pissed.

People are crowding out of the stores and buildings around them, gawking and gossiping, some taking pictures on their phones. Scott grips his arm, almost too tightly.  “We should get in and see if anyone’s hurt.”

Stiles nods slightly. “Right.”

He follows Scott into the mess without a second thought.

\---

The slide of his partly open window wakes Stiles with a jolt. He’d fallen asleep mid-research, bent uncomfortably over his desk, head cushioned by one of his thicker, older, grimoires. The research was prompted by the--yet another--day of weirdness in Beacon Hills. The traffic pile-up had been pretty damn impressive, but thankfully no one had been badly injured. He and Scott had ended up having to give a witness statement, after they’d spent the afternoon helping drivers and passengers out of their cars.

After something like that, he’s hoping to find something, _anything_ soon. He needs to figure out what these things are so he can put a stop to their games before they outright kill someone. He’s had no such luck, though. He looks over, bleary eyed, to find Derek sliding through the now fully open window, a frown on his face.

“Y’know, the whole ‘my dad knows everything now’ thing should stop your compulsive need to sneak in here. Right?”

Derek manages to look a little contrite. “He’s asleep, on the sofa. I didn’t want to wake him.”

Stiles pauses. “That’s... oddly conscientious of you.” The comment has Derek pursing his lips at him, expresion otherwise closed off, but he ignores it and wipes at his face with his sleeve instead, waving his other hand at his bed in invitation to sit. “What’re you here for anyway?”

Derek ignores the offer of the bed and instead begins to pace the room. Stiles turns his chair so he can watch him, feeling a bit like a spectator at a tennis match. He’s not really awake enough to have Derek stalking around his bedroom at ass o’clock in the morning. But whatever.

It takes three circuits of his room for Derek to finally work himself up enough to get whatever it is out of his system.

“I don’t know what to do,” Derek says with a hint of frustration to his tone, voice still low enough that it won’t wake his dad downstairs, and Stiles finally gets why he’s been chosen for rant-night. Derek still has plenty of problems letting go of things like this with the werewolf members of the pack, for a number of reasons not just limited to being alpha of a bunch of teenagers, and his sister isn’t in town this month.

“Thing’s have been good, almost settled, for a _year_. Now, fairies? _Seriously_?” Derek’s fists are balled at his sides as he moves around the room, his brows drawn down in an impressively frustrated frown.

Stiles snorts. “Well, a year apart from the-”

“You know what I mean. We’ve pulled together. Things are good.”

Stiles pulls a leg up, rests his bare foot on the seat and his chin on his knee, arms wrapped loosely around his leg. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” There’ve been one or two hiccups in the past year, but nothing they couldn’t handle, and handled pretty well, all things considered.

“We can’t even tell what it is that’s - there’s nothing for us to - _what are we supposed to do_ , when the ‘ _bad guys_ ’,” and Stiles presses another snort into his knee at the visual of Derek _actually_ quirking his fingers in extremely sarcastic air quotes, “don’t show themselves.”

Derek does another circuit of the room and Stiles stays where he is, watches, lets him work it out, hiding a smile behind his knee at Derek’s frustration.

“These attacks - no, they’re not even attacks - they’re _stupid_. It’s like some sort of joke.” Derek’s pacing slows and he frowns as he looks out the window, at the view of Beacon Hills. “They,” he waves a hand at the window, presumably at the mundane human population of Beacon Hills, “are mostly ignoring it. How long is that going to last? How long before-?”

Derek seems to deflate suddenly and finally he sits on the edge of Stiles’ bed, almost gingerly. “There’s worse than the Argent’s out there. Worse than Gerard and the Alpha pack. And if they come here...”

And there it is, the thing Derek’s obsessing over. The threat to the pack from unnamed sources. If it comes out that there’s something not ‘normal’ here in Beacon hills, if it comes out that werewolves _exist_ , there’s all manner of things that could happen, the least of which being the local Hunters kicking up yet another storm. Stiles has kept the revelation made during his visit to the Hale house, that this is likely just the beginning with a whole lot more to come, to himself for exactly this reason.

“Dude, you know that’s not gonna happen, right?” Stiles says, lifting his chin from his knee. “You know the general population of everywhere basically turns a blind eye to this stuff, right?”

Derek makes a frustrated noise; this is another discussion they’ve had many times. In fact, it was one of these discussions that lead to Stiles finally revealing all to his dad.

“And one day, you are so telling me about these ‘worse’ things, Derek. I mean it, I will harass you forever. You know I will, you know I can do that.” He jabs a finger pointedly in Derek’s direction, lets himself babble some more, deliberately missing the actual point. “My own imagination is pretty good here, you know that, we all know that, so it would be nice if we could make it stop with the pictures of horrible terrifying things with teeth and death and mayhem, inject some reality into it. Maybe tone it down. Or, I dunno, give me something concrete to plan how to kill.”

After a long pause, Derek smirks and jerks his head once in a quick acknowledgement, if not agreement, and with a speculative glance at Stiles, he changes the subject. “I looked into some things. Turns out whatever they are, they started harassing people a week or so before your training day.”

Stiles quirks a brow, letting the subject change slide. “Yeah?” He also doesn’t question the careful way Derek has been avoiding mentioning anything else that happened that day, ever since their little disagreement on the way home.

“Three hikers got lost in the preserve two weeks ago. When they finally got back to base, they were taken to hospital for hysteria, talking about laughter following them and things going missing.” Derek rubs at his hair with one hand. “My parents... This sort of information - they’d have known about it within days of it happening. Hours, maybe. Orenda is on top of things like _this_ ,” he snaps his fingers to illustrate, “and here we are-”

Stiles splutters a little. “Dude, it’s not like you have the same resources your family did, or Orenda does.” Stiles knows this one, they’ve talked around this issue before a few times, too. Derek rarely mentions his parents, so he must be really freaked. “You - we - _we’re a young pack_ , we’re still re-making the ties your family had, that Orenda has. _Of course_ things are gonna slip under our radar now and then. I’m surprised it hasn’t more often.”

Derek simply gives him one of his long-suffering glares, so he shrugs. “ _Anyway_ , I went to have a chat with them last night up at the house and, well, I may be on the right track to who, _what_ they are now, at least.” He nods at the grimoire and Derek stands again, comes over to take a look.

“This is - this is one of Peter’s books?” Derek asks, tracing two fingers down a page yellowed with age.

Stiles shrugs again, as he turns his chair back to face the desk. “Yeah. He came in useful for something, after all.”

Derek snorts, but doesn’t say anything more; like Cora’s particular pack status, Peter as a whole is still a sore subject. “What have you found?”

Derek drops one hand on the back of Stiles computer chair as he leans in closer and Stiles suppresses a twitch as he rubs his own hands together. “They’re _old_ , dude. As in, freakin’ _ancient_. They also play by the old rules, which is why they’ve not shown themselves yet. I gotta find out their real name and call them by it, _then_ they’ll talk to me. It’s stupid, but it’s a thing.”

He flips a few pages back, shows Derek the information about the older Fair Folk and Dusky Elves. Not that he’ll be able to make head nor tails of it, considering Stiles himself has had to use a half-dozen translation books to work it all out, but still.

“What were you doing going up there alone, anyway?” Derek asks after a moment, fingers now tracing the intricate decorative patterns on the page.

Stiles shrugs again. “Trusting my instincts.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “At least text someone to let us know where you’re heading if you do that. I’d rather not have to deal with Scott if you get kidnapped, again.”

“Hey. That totally wasn’t my fault!”

\---

Stiles stumbles his way down the stairs at ass o’clock in the morning a day later and nearly collides with his dad as he comes in from work.

“Stiles! Did you get _any_ sleep?”

Stiles rubs a hand over his face, watches as his dad unbuckles his holster. “Uh, maybe?”

“Maybe?”

He shrugs and follows bleary-eyed as his dad heads into the kitchen. He drops heavily into one of the chairs and watches his dad open the fridge and root around for something to eat.

“What’s keeping you up, kid? Homework?” Stiles winces at the tone his dad uses, it’s saying a whole lot that sounds like ‘please, god, let it just be homework’.

“Meh. I’m trying to figure out what’s playing all the pranks in town.”

His dad straightens up, sniffing at a bottle of soy milk as he does. “Pranks. You mean the coffee and the glasses?” He takes a sip, his features scrunching up in distaste, then puts the bottle back in the fridge as Stiles shrugs, explains, “Yeah, and the hikers a couple weeks back, and the clocks and the traffic lights. It’s all been the same thing, and they’ve kinda challenged me to figure out what they are, or they’ll keep doing it?”

His dad pauses and looks at him for a moment, then pulls out the orange juice and pours himself a glass. He puts the carton away again, then sits across from Stiles with a heavy sigh, taking a sip of the juice. Stiles can feel the weight of the moment, so he stays quiet, rubs at his eyes a little, waits for his dad to stop thinking and say what’s on his mind.

After a long silence: “We had a report come in of a hiker dying up on the preserve yesterday. It looks like it was an accident, but there were a couple of anomalous findings, which is why it came through my office.”

Stiles wakes up a little more at that. “Anomalous?”

His dad nods, takes another mouthful of juice. After a moment, he puts the glass down. “He’d only been out for a day, but all his food was rotten. He was an experienced hiker, had hiked the preserve a couple dozen times, so he had to know his way around, where the dangerous areas are, that sort of thing. But they found him in an area hikers avoid because of it’s treacherous footing, with no map, no compass, no water.”

Stiles purses his lips, recognising the same things the three earlier hikers had reported.

“He was also, strangely, dusted with a few red sequins and beads. But, the most interesting thing is that the only reason he was found so quickly, was because of an anonymous tip off.”

“What-” His dad holds up a finger; Stiles stops talking.

“And the tip off came in writing, on a page from the hikers own diary, a diary that was later found in his backpack.”

Stiles blinks.

“The handwriting was a little hard to read, but the instructions on where to find him were very clear, and came with an apology, of sorts.”

“An apology?” Stiles asked, weakly.

His dad nods. “Yeah. ‘Not what intended. Did not mean.’”

They sit in silence for a long moment. Eventually, Stiles rubs his hands through his sleep-messy hair, cups the back of his neck. “That - that sounds like them. I really need to figure this out, oh my god.”

His dad drains the last of the juice and stands, puts the glass on the counter next to the sink, and starts heading out. “Try not to put this all on yourself, son. As much as I know you may want to, you cannot _actually_ control everything supernatural in this town.”

Stiles sags a little as his dad pats him on the shoulder. “I just want to keep everyone _safe_ , y’know?”

There’s a slight pause, and then the hand on his shoulder slides over until his dad is giving him an awkward one-armed hug. “I know, and I’m proud of you for it. Just. Try not to let it take over though.”

Stiles smiles and leans around until he can hug his dad back.

“If, however, you figure out a way for me to explain this without having to misplace things or hide the truth...?” His dad cocks an eyebrow, gives him a smirk and then heads upstairs.

\---

“Goddamn... it can’t be!” Stiles mutters to himself as he re-reads the passage in the oldest grimoire in his collection. “They’re supposed to be _extinct_. Fuck everything.” He’s surprised and a little excited at the prospect of re-discovering a magical species long thought extinct. Even if they have been the bane of Beacon Hills for three weeks.

He digs his phone out of his blazer pocket where it’s hanging on the back of his chair, taps in a message as he stumbles about, pulling on clean pants and a slightly less funky shirt, grabs his hoody. It’s roughly two in the morning, but he’s certain Derek will be awake. Dude’s always awake.

To: BBW

Figured it out! Gotta go up to the house. You said you wanted to know, so here’s me telling you. Now get over here, gonna need your alphaness there

From: BBW

What is it? On my way.

To: BBW

Dude srsly just get here, I’ll tell you on the way

He’s down on the sidewalk in front of his house and waiting for the Camaro roughly two minutes later, shivering slightly in the suddenly cool air. It’s late, his dad is at work again, most of the street is silent, and faint halos of light glow around the street lights, showing the moisture in the air, promising rain.

Pretty much everyone is either tucked up in bed, or in their dens watching late-night TV, safe and comfortable and ignorant. He feels a momentary pang of jealousy for their ordinary lives, with no knowledge of the kind of shit he has to deal with now, then shakes his head to dispel the thought as Derek pulls up, leans over and pushes the passenger side door open.

“ _Get in_ , Stiles. Tell me what’s going on.”

Stiles slides in, slams the door and opens the heavy book he’s brought with him as Derek pulls away. Derek’s eyes flick at the pages as Stiles shuffles through them.

He finds the page he’s looking for and gives a small crow of triumph as he lifts the book up to show off the woodcut. “Portunes!” The image shows hundreds of tiny little humanoids with beards and medieval-looking clothes, standing or sitting all over some trees and a tumble-down house in the background.

Derek glances at the picture, frowns at him. “What.”

“They’re like - dude - just, here, lemme read it to you. ‘Ex Gallia et Anglia transmigrandi Praeterea, Portunes domos faciunt in uillis aut fundum relictum domos. Vulgares huiusmodi minutis’ -”

Derek grunts, annoyed amusement ringing through his voice as he says, “Stiles. _English_.”

Stiles coughs and grins. “Ok. Well, they started off in France, moved into England and must have made their way over here sometime. Probably when the first British colonists came over, actually. Anyway,” he points at the picture, “They’re little Elves, they have black hair and beards, they wear bright reds or blues, they live in abandoned buildings and they’re described as, uh, ‘high spirited and given to mischief’ and they particularly like to lead travelers astray.”

“They’re _elves_?”

Stiles grins, “Yes. Tiny little elves! Like, seriously, tiny, about an inch tall, inch and a half if they eat right.”

“An _inch_. And _they_ are what have been causing all this trouble?”

Stiles wrinkles his nose. “Yeah dude. Being tiny doesn’t change the effects of their magic. Especially when they join forces.”

“Stiles, they killed a man. If they ‘join forces’ what else could they do?”

Stiles maybe flails a little. Maybe. “They didn’t mean to! I mean, it’s horrible, of course! But. I cannot explain how happy I am that it was an _accident_ , that they’re not actually out to kill everyone in town! And they’re _old_ , really _really_ old. They’ve been a little out of touch is all. They’re meant to be extinct! Nothing in any of the books says anything about them being malicious, just mischievous. They play pranks, they like to have fun and laugh - and when they like you, they help out with the chores and keep kids safe.”

“And kill people.” Derek’s voice is flat, monotone, a simple statement of fact.

“Hey, they apologised. It was an accident! They don’t think like we do, they’re not human - uh, werewolves... _people_. They’re _magical creatures_ , with a whole different way of looking at things!”

Derek gives him a flat stare, eyebrows raised, before turning back to the road.

Stiles pauses, becoming aware that he’s apparently making excuses for what would constitute _negligent homicide_ in human terms. The thought makes him cringe - would he make these same excuses if a bunch of teenagers stole a hikers map and compass and lead him astray, only for him to fall off a cliff? He’d been so happy to learn that they’re not bloodthirsty, malicious creatures out for blood, like most of the things that come into Beacon Hills, that he’d been willing to completely overlook it.

“Oohhkay. I can totally see where you’re coming from here.” He slams the book closed and purses his lips. “But. They _did_ think to make an apology... of sorts. So that means they can be reasoned with, right? That we can negotiate with them? Draw up terms and stuff?”

Derek raises an eyebrow at him, makes the turn that leads up to the old Hale house. “Right.”

“Alright. So - we’ll see what I can get out of them. Y’know, I’ll just talk logical loops around them until they give up. Or something.”

Derek makes a noise that sounds like a sigh and Stiles grins.

\---

The weather has turned in the past two days, from warm sunshine and cooling breezes to overcast grey days with threats of rain. As they pull up the bumpy driveway to the Hale house, Stiles watches the first few drops of water hit the windshield, small splashes that slide across the glass to the wing-mirrors and further. Derek puts the camaro in park and the few drops turn steadily into a light patter that sets up a gentle hiss of white noise as they open the doors and slide out.

Stiles leaves the grimoire on the passenger seat and pulls the hoodie he threw on tighter across his chest, zips it up with slick fingers. Derek shrugs his shoulders under his leather jacket, apparently working it into a more comfortable, less leaky position. He wishes for a moment that he’d learned a ‘stay dry’ spell, makes a mental note to look up if one exists.

On an unspoken agreement, they jog across the lawn together and up onto the porch. It’s leaking a little, but it’s far drier than standing out in the rain. They bump shoulders briefly in the jostle to get through the front door and into relative dryness, and Stiles grins, wipes a hand down his face, shakes his head to get the excess water out of his hair. He quirks an eyebrow as Derek does a whole body sort of shake that Stiles can’t help but think of as dog-like.

“Well, could be worse, right? A little rain never hurt anyone.”

Derek snorts at him, an incredulous expression crossing his features for a moment as he shakes the water out of his, now flattened, hair.

“Yeah, yeah.” Witches and weather spells. He’s really not a fan of covens.

Derek looks around. “So... What do we do?”

“Oh. Actually, this is the easy part.” Stiles looks around them at the fire stained, weather stained building. He can feel the Portunes all around him, little magical signatures from every available angle, hundreds, thousands. The knowledge of their presence prickles at his senses. He’s been able to feel them since they parked, as they came up the drive, even. He cups his hands around his mouth and yells, “Hey! I figured it out! You’re Portunes!”

There’s a rustling sound, so suddenly that Derek and Stiles both startle, spinning and almost colliding as they try to see where it’s coming from. The rustling grows louder, faster, draws closer. Derek tenses and steps in front of Stiles, not that doing so will actually help, because a moment later thousands and thousands of tiny bodies start appearing from every available surface, every shadow, every hole. They’re surrounded in seconds and Stiles and Derek stand very, very still.

Stiles looks around. There are...well there are a great deal more Portunes than he expected, and he expected a few thousand. There have to be a few _hundred_ thousand here, all of them staring at them, silently and watchfully.

They look like tiny old people, wizened and wrinkled, but they’re standing straight, so that must just be how they look, regardless of age. As he looks at them, he can see every skin tone between nut brown and darkest ebony, bright black hair and beards in outlandish styles. The explanation for the flashes of red he’s been seeing becomes clear, as every single one of them is wearing bright red clothing - everything from tunic and breeches to kilts, decorated with the brightest red jewels, stones and the ruby red beads and sequins he’s been finding.

At least a third of them are carrying what look like frog and rat carcasses, bags spilling unidentifiable grains, nuts and seeds. He even sees two Portunes carrying a rodent-skin bag of french fries between them. There’s probably more that he can’t see, that they’ve secreted away on the grounds, in the cellar.

Every last one of them has a weapon. Tiny bows and arrows, miniscule swords, axes, pikes, hammers - everything. He’s not sure about Derek, but they could certainly kill him at a moment’s notice if they felt like it. He really hopes they don’t feel like it.

He clears his throat.

There’s some shuffling in the ranks of Portunes near the old fireplace, and suddenly the Portunes start moving closer. Hundreds of thousands of tiny bodies stream around their feet in utter silence, moving between them, a few times even over them, and that really feels like very determined mice are crawling over his feet. The sensation sends a shiver down his spine.

The sound of thousands of feet on old wood is actually deafening and Stiles can see the discomfort on Derek’s features, realizes the creatures must have been working really hard not to be noticed every time any of the wolves were up here.

Stiles and Derek sidestep a little, trying not to stand on anyone, and it’s a long moment before Stiles realizes they’ve been separated in the shuffling, that he’s being herded closer while Derek is being herded back.

“ _Stiles_.” Of course, Derek noticed.

“It’s fine, uh, I’ll be fine. Probably.” He glances back. “Uh, no promises?”

Derek scowls at him, turns his gaze on the Portunes around them. “If you hurt him, you are declaring war against the Hale pack. This is Hale territory, I’m the Alpha, and I _will_ find a way to kill you.”

Stiles stares, unsure how to react to that declaration, even as he keeps moving slowly closer to the fireplace.

“We not hurt,” a voice croaks from the shadows, far louder and bigger sounding that the small bodies seem capable of.

The Portunes stop and Stiles looks at the crumbling remains of the mantel piece. Standing roughly central is a slightly taller Portune, maybe two inches in height, their hair and beard done in intricate plaits and knots, their clothing a set of well decorated, sparkling, brilliant-red tunic and breeches.

“Maybe not now, but you killed a man a day ago. Caused dozens of injuries. Why should we trust you?”

Stiles watches the Portune as Derek speaks and sees no trace of discomfort in the tiny features, no trace of deception as they respond, “Accident. Not what intended.”

“Yeah, you said that.” Stiles says, a touch heatedly. “I read what I could find on you, you like games and laughter. But - uh,” he pauses, “What do I call you?”

“Ealdormann.” The Portune folds their arms and gives him an arrogant look.

He rolls the word around his mouth for a moment, trying it out, making a mental note to look it up later. “Alright. Ealdormann. You _can’t_ play those sorts of games here. Especially not the big stuff. Turning all the food and drink foul? Hiding everyone’s glasses? Playing with traffic? That stuff gets noticed!”

He takes a breath. “And you let someone die. You _can’t_ do that.”

The crowds of Portunes shift again, and he can hear it, the movement of thousands of bodies as they grow restless. It sends another shiver down his spine.

“Wanted you notice,” the Ealdorman says, now appearing to glare at him. “Wanted Stiles Stilinski to see. To think. To recognize.”

Stiles is struck dumb for a moment. He glances back at Derek, sees his own reaction reflected back at him. He turns back to the Ealdormann. “So this. This wasn’t about the pack.”

It’s not really a question; he’s been thinking it since the night he came to visit, that the Portunes are just the start of something. But the Ealdormann shakes their head and answers him anyway: “Many reasons. Pack maybe. Pack maybe not. Portunes come. Portunes stay.”

“Are you going to tell us what it is about?” Derek asks, almost softly. Stiles glances at him again, can’t read his expression.

The Portunes all shift, a ripple of movement that passes through the ranks, and the Ealdormann smiles, croaky voice growing softer, “Winds blow. Trees shake. Earth crumbles. Tower falls. Ealdormann sees.” The little figure shrugs. “Thing happen. We come. We stay. We play.”   

Derek snorts. “So that’s a no then.” But Stiles turns the creatures words over in his head, commits them to memory.

The Ealdormann simply continues to smile. Stiles runs a hand through his hair again. He understands that they’re Fair Folk, and that Fair Folk rarely give straight answers, but they can and do often respect magic and magic users. Technically, he should be able to get them to agree to a few rules if they want to stay in the Preserve. He just hopes he’s not overstepping things with Derek if he does this. Hopes he works with him on it.

“So, you got my notice. You got my recognition. You got the Pack Alpha’s attention. In fact, you got our attention _and_ our anger.”

The Portunes ripple with something again, and this time their voices join the rustling of feet on wood, a low sound that Stiles can barely hear, but knows is there from the way it crawls over his skin, lifts the hair on the back of his neck. Knows it from the way Derek shakes his head, rubs at his ears, hard.

“Not. Intended,” the Ealdormann says again firmly, this time looking a little reproachful and Stiles can’t figure out if it means the accident, or angering the pack.

“Many games. Only games. Fun. Play. Accident only, not repeat.”

“Good,” Stiles says quickly, looking around at the still muttering ranks of Portunes, takes that chance. “We’ve chased creatures and covens out of Beacon Hills before. We can and will find a way to kick you out, too, if we have to.”

The rustling grows suddenly louder, the voices stronger. His skin prickles up in goose bumps and he looks around at the thousands of faces, all staring up at him from the floor, the overturned and ruined furniture, down at him from the walls, the ceiling, the wall fittings, in what looks like a mix of fear and wonder. The Ealdormann makes a sudden movement, slashes their hand downward, and the rustling, the voices, stop.

The silence is deafening.

“We not do again. Stiles Stilinski not remove Portunes.”

Stiles squares his shoulders, hopes Derek will agree to this. “You have to strike an accord. With Alpha Hale. Beacon Hills and the Preserve are _his_ territory, _his_ land, it’s been in his family for generations. Strike the accord, stick to the rules, and we’ll let you stay here.”

He can feel the stillness of the room, can even feel Derek staring at his back, probably with an incredulous expression, but he has a feeling this is the right thing to do here. The Portunes are old and they should respect the old way of doing things.

He waits maybe thirty breaths, feels every one of them, deep in his lungs, consciously refuses to actually count them, before the Ealdormann nods, breaks the silence with their odd, croaky voice. “Rules are what?”

Stiles relaxes and looks back at Derek, “Alpha?” He beckons him over. Derek gives him another unreadable look and mouths, ‘ _What are you doing?_ ’ As he does, the Portunes move again, pouring away from the floor between them, leaving the way clear for Derek to move closer.

Derek stands straighter, makes a visible effort to appear less concerned than he really is. He moves to Stiles’ side in three strides, close enough to touch if he wants to.

“Trust me,” Stiles says low enough that hopefully only Derek hears him. He realizes that he’s put Derek on the spot, but he trusts him, believes he can do this.

Derek blinks, and his eyes are the red of the Alpha, Stiles can see it through the flicker of his lashes. Stiles keeps his hands loose and free by his thighs, flexes his fingers, ready, just in case.

Derek nods and the room falls still as he looks at the Ealdormann, unflinching, fierce.

“No deaths,” he says, voice calm, strong. “Not even accidental. Don’t do anything that could even possibly result in death. Are we clear?”

The Ealdormann nods. “Seht.”

Derek frowns, but continues. “No lasting harm, of any kind, to any living thing or object.”

The Ealdormann purses their lips, looks at Stiles briefly. Stiles only nods, so the Ealdormann looks back to Derek. “Seht.”

“Nothing that will be noticed by human authorities. Nothing big, or showy, like the past few weeks. Keep it small and simple. I don’t want people coming here to investigate.”

There’s another small ripple of movement and voices from the surrounding Portunes, but the Ealdormann looks quickly around at them, glares them into submission. “Seht.”

Derek pauses, and Stiles understands that he’s going to do something important, something that might have repercussions. Derek’s back and shoulders straighten, he takes a deep breath. “Come to our aid when we need it, and we’ll come to yours.”

The ripple of movement in the Portunes is louder, stronger, the voices higher than they have been so far. Every Portune in the room is speaking. The Ealdormann looks startled and there is a long, long moment where they say nothing. Then they once again motion for silence. “Seht.”

Derek releases a breath and looks at Stiles, the red bleeding out from his eyes as he steps back. Stiles nods, lifts one hand.

He’s not sure if this is right, or even what prompted him to think of doing it, but it feels like the thing to do, so he reaches down inside, plucks a tiny thread of his magic up and his hand begins to glow, just the smallest bit. He holds it out, one finger outstretched to the Ealdormann. “The accord then. No deaths. No lasting damage. Nothing that will get you, or us, noticed. Ally with us. For that, you get free reign of the Hale territory, and our aid.”

The Ealdorman steps forward on the mantel, reaching their own hand out. “No death. No damage. No notice pack. No notice Portunes. Ally.” The tiny hand touches the tip of Stiles finger and he can feel the magic coalesce, take form. There is a small flash of brilliant white light where their hands touch and it’s over.

He can feel the spell settling into him, into the house, into the very land beneath them all. It’s a strange feeling and he wonders, briefly, if he did the right thing. He hopes he did.

The Portunes melt away. All but the Ealdormann, standing on the mantel, alone, a satisfied expression on their tiny features. “Stiles Stilinski. Ealdormann answer one question.”

Stiles thinks about everything he could ask this creature, the hundreds of questions. All the uncertainties of his life, of the pack’s existence, about Beacon Hills, about what could be coming for them, about everything. Then he decides he’d rather find out as it happens.

“You were meant to be extinct,” he says with a grin. “Where were you?”

The Portune grins back at him, eyes sparkling, “World got boring. Went away. Not far. Not far. World not boring anymore. Back now.”

\---

The tallest buildings of Sacramento can still be seen on the horizon. The lights of the city make the sky above glow a deep orange. They haven’t seen the stars in generations, haven’t walked the fields, kept to the secret streets below, hidden in shadows, taken only what they needed to, when they needed to, scavenged and stolen and bartered and lived, lived, lived. Now they navigate by the stars, as of old, the eldest of them peering upwards, calling directions in broken, tired voices.

They follow a nameless feeling. They follow secret hints, and they follow whispers of safety to be found in a nothing town in the middle of a preserve.

She is taking them from this place, their home, hoping to leave the danger behind them. But she knows it follows, can feel it nipping at their heels as they walk, traveling by night, leaving her weakened, can feel it on the very edge of her senses.

She hopes, perhaps foolishly, that they can reach safety before it catches up to them.

\---

Original Entry (translated by Stiles Stilinski):

Portunes: Originating in France, migrating to England and further, Portunes make their homes in abandoned homesteads or farm houses. These tiny folk are high spirited and given to mischief. They enjoy leading travelers astray, causing annoying, yet harmless predicaments and laughing as they do. They are good workers and are considered lucky. They will protect animals and young children. They have the appearance of wizened old men, with nut-brown skin, and black hair and beards; there is no apparent difference between the genders. They are most often only an inch tall, though some have reached two inches. They prefer to wear brightly coloured clothing, often patchworks of red or blue. Portunes feed primarily on small rodents and frogs or toads, which they apparently hunt in an economical manner. They are one of the only Dusky Elf species to have gone extinct, which is a great loss of one of the oldest species known to lore.

Additional information (added by Stiles Stilinski):

Not as extinct as we thought they were.

\---

Title from quote:

 “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

― [W.B. Yeats](http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/29963.W_B_Yeats)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: There is a very-minor-character death mentioned in this installment, but not seen. Plenty of swearing. Plenty of weird supernatural going's on that can be dangerous to a person's physical and mental health. Some unthinking assholery on Stiles' part that is called out.


End file.
